The Book of Armagh
Liber Ardmachanus
TCD MS 52

A valuable Irish [manuscript] written on 221 leaves of vellum. It had been called The Canon of Patrick, and it was believed that the manuscript was of his own production. However, it was a Bishop Charles Graves who discovered that it had in fact been made by one Ferdomnach of [Armagh] in the year 807. Interestingly, there is, at the bottom of [folio] 16 verso are the words in conspectu Briani imperatoris Scotorum, "In the presense of [Brian Boru|Brian], King of the Irish"--probably in the year 1002. There were numerous re-tracings and erasures of the manuscript over time. According to the [Catholic Encyclopedia]:

It is not only one of the very oldest monuments of the Old-lrish, since it is antedated only by the fragmentary glosses in the Irish manuscripts preserved on the Continent, but it is the earliest extant specimen of a continuous narrative in Irish prose. It represents the language of the end of the seventh, or of the beginning of the eighth, century.¹

However, the documents it contains are much older than the ninth century. It contains a few [saints' lives], in particular one of [Saint Patrick] as well as many other works related to him.

It was given a special status among books; people would even testify by it, like a [Bible]; it had its own special guardian appointed.

SOURCES
"The Book of Armagh." The Catholic Encyclopedia. URL: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01733a.htm

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